THE PROBLEM
America faces two big, connected problems:
- The gap between the wealthy and the rest of us keeps widening, shortchanging opportunity, destabilizing our economy and threatening our democracy.
- We aren’t raising enough public revenue for vital investments and services that can help create an economy that works for all of us, not just the wealthy few.
THE SOLUTION
We need to raise trillions of dollars by making the rich and corporations pay their fair share of taxes so we can protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and invest in education, affordable childcare, decent housing, infrastructure, clean renewable energy and more. This solution will require numerous progressive reforms to the tax system—many of them complicated and opposed by powerful special interests.
A MAJOR FIRST STEP
One major first step toward a fairer and more equitable tax code is a Millionaires Surtax. This relatively simple reform would add an additional 10% tax on top of the existing tax rates paid by the very wealthy. It would affect the richest 0.2%—families whose income exceeds $2 million a year.